Here in the high-rise heart of the Gold Coast, the human noise-machine never really sleeps. The ultimate big sound in this beachside mini-metropolis is the awesome Pacific Ocean. But even the pounding surf is not enough to drown out the relentless human noise-scape. Human noise is actually drowning out the sounds of nature. This phenomenon has a name. Dr Bernie Krause, world leading expert in recording natural sound, describes the total soundscape produced by human societies as ‘anthropophony’. While Surfers’ anthropophony is not in the league of, say, Hong Kong’s stupendous wall of sound, the jagged clatter often drives me to close my windows and doors to escape the relentless clamour in a quest for good night’s sleep.
Why is city life so loud and how can we change it?
Urban noises layer upon layers of urban noise, yet the constituent parts of techno-noisiness are readily discernible in Surfers Paradise. They range from ridiculously loud culprits that are to do with the place being everybody’s playground, like jet boats, jet skis and low-flying supersonic jets, to the usual suspects that contribute to the dull roar of everyday life in high density neighbourhoods here and around Australia. From the machines we use in the name of urban cleanliness and maintenance, the leaf-blower and the high-pressure hose, to the engine rooms of gigantic buildings, noise in the external urban environment affects our comfort and well-being where we live. Chainsaws, mowers, blowers, wood-chippers; drills, jack-hammers and pile-drivers. These motors for macerating are mostly deployed in daylight hours; unless tunnelling or roadworks are involved. That’s another story.
The residents who call this place home fatalistically accept anthropophonic noise and the stress and anxiety induced, as part of the deal. Some even to profess to love it, especially the sound-barrier breaking noise that people behind the wheels of fossil-fuel burning jalopies foist upon the rest of us who share the acoustic atmosphere. It reminds them of their own misspent youths doing the block in their precious bombs. Of all nocturnal noises, rampageous shrieks of internal combustion engines are guaranteed to agitate sleepers. Mega-decibel explosions emanating from the tail pipes of back-firing show-pony motorcycles and souped up gas guzzlers are aggravating any time of the day, and downright disturbing at night. See Living in the Party Zone
Stridulous sirens wail around the clock. Emergency services coming through! Hovering helicopters whoomph omni-directionally, their actual whereabouts obscured by towering buildings, the chopper noise distorted and hinting at hidden threats.
The street orchestra of garbage-wrangling ranks high as a repeat offender. It begins with the rolling thunder of industrial-scale metallic bins being towed out of basements onto the streets late into the night and continues as collection trucks begin their cacophonous rounds in the early hours. The bellowing bangs make for an anthropophonic dystopian nightmare.
Yet this urban babel is not inevitable. The sources and causes of unwanted loud sounds depend on the services we want and the available technology we accept to deliver them. For example, we want to move leaves from pathways. Two technologies: one quiet and labour-intensive, the other loud and labour-saving. Broom vs leaf blower. No-one sweeps anymore of course (though I find sweeping can be a quietly satisfactory activity). Most contractors show they mean business and opt for big noisy smelly diesel bazookas to prove it.
Why it is necessary to blow leaves out of gardens into streets continues to puzzle me, but things are looking up in my neighbourhood. The crew with the grounds-maintenance contracts for two of the largest apartment buildings nearby have just switched from diesel-driven gardening equipment to battery powered appliances. Instead of the monotonous and inescapable ear-splitting whine of the old diesel blower wielded for hours on end several days a week, their constant leaf-blowing activities are now barely noticeable from my apartment ten floors up.
Electric garbage trucks? Why not? City of Gold Coast already has a fleet of cute little EV’s to empty the bins on the Esplanade. But it’s not the trucks so much as what we deem to be ‘waste’, and our system of ‘managing’ it that both need a complete re-think.
Stinky gas-guzzlers make a lot of noise but in reality they are a diminishing proportion of vehicles on the road, and are destined for extinction. Not only is Surfers Paradise in the 4217 postcode area which topped Queensland for take-up of electric vehicles in 2024 and 2025, the national emissions rating for new cars which took effect a year ago means that more cars on the road are just not as noisy nor as noisome. And many late adopters are discovering the joys of traveling by electric tram rather than by car since Queensland’s 50 cent fares have brought public transport to their attention as an attractive alternative to driving and parking. Little by little, battery electric buses will replace the loud polluters in the fleet too. As the renewable energy transformation gradually overtakes out-dated 20th Century fossil-fuel technology, and better systems thinking leads to more car-free urban space for pedestrians and cyclists and quieter vehicles, maybe emergency services’ sirens too can afford to be less shrill.
The tall buildings we occupy are the one part of the system that seem hardest to change – not that we don’t know how to design buildings more attuned to place than the insular energy-intensive giants that are beginning to dominate the contemporary urban housing fabric – we were doing it successfully not that long ago. The buildings we choose to build and how we build them are dominated by one sector’s narrow view of yield; the same sector that says changing construction codes will make construction ‘too expensive’; all the while the buildings they’re building right now will be extremely expensive to power and cool in decades to come. We’re already retrofitting the ones we have with expensive double-glazing to keep out the noise, and replacing practical metal balustrades with impractical sheets of glass to meet some misguided aesthetic standard. If all that glass was able to generate solar power, the buildings might be quieter too.
Everything else, including the jet boats and jet skis, is ripe for electrification. When the urban soundscape is more in balance with the sounds of nature, the quality of everyday urban life improves. Turning down the volume and making cities quieter and cleaner could even make them kinder and friendlier.
subtropicalcities.com 